30A - Final Reflection

1. Reading through all of my posts from the semester brought back a lot of memories of the course, specifically what my life was like at each point in time when I was completing the assignments. It is exciting to see how far we've come this semester and crazy to think about how much things have changed.

2.  I would say the most formative experience was simply having the opportunity to develop an entrepreneurial idea from conception and go through so many stages in the process of what any successful entrepreneur would do to bring their idea to life. I will remember doing my elevator pitches and getting better at presenting an idea. I am proud of myself for reading the three books that I did and learning from them as I had been slacking in doing reading recently.

3. While I don't see myself as an entrepreneur per se as I haven't had any technical experience with bringing an idea to life, I do believe this class has definitely helped to grow my entrepreneurial mindset so that when the time comes for me to actually put entrepreneurial skills to work I will be able to do so.

4. I would recommend to future students taking this class that they keep a very open mind and be open to new ideas throughout the entire duration of the course. Entrepreneurs need to be able to see things in a different way from other people and practicing that in everyday life will help to foster those skills. In order to perform well in this course I recommend that they stay on top of all assignments so they never accidentally forget an assignment due to poor planning like myself.

29A - Venture Concept No. 2

1. In Gainesville, especially on the UF campus and the surrounding residential areas, there is very limited parking for students. With many students owning cars, coupled with the rapid growth of Gainesville and UF due to the school’s surging academic prowess this lack of parking has becoming a big problem for many students, faculty, and other residents in the area. While most apartments offer some form of reserved parking spaces, these can be incredibly expensive, costing upwards of 100 dollars per month. If purchasing your own parking space is not an option for someone, they are left with no other option but to purchase a city parking decal, relegating them to parking on the street with no guarantee of location or even availability in general. This may lead many students to try to avoid using their car just so they won’t have to be in a situation where they are unsure of where they are going to find parking. However, some students don’t even have the luxury to have options on when to use their car. Students with part-time jobs may have to drive to work and then go straight to class leaving them very little time to spend searching the streets for an available spot or waiting for someone else to leave one open. I believe that no product or service is currently serving the demand for facilitating the process of finding parking and apart from reserved spaces (which are contingent on whether you have the financial resources to get one) there is no readily available solution for students in this situation. This window of opportunity should be open for a considerable period of time. The only thing that could take this opportunity away would be the development of a considerable amount of more parking that is easily accessible and cheap which could either not happen at all or take years to decades to manifest itself. I, therefore, believe this opportunity is significantly large and would have a large enough consumer base to make it a worthwhile opportunity to find a solution to. 
The innovation I’m proposing would be one that would allow people using city parking to find spaces easier and know the amount and location of open spaces. 

- I am proposing an app that uses crowdsourced data to compile and distribute this information. 
- Of course, this app would become more and more useful as more and more people used it and that is sort of the beauty of it in a way. 
- With people reporting spaces that are open and reporting when they have parked in a space, the algorithm that the app uses will continuously update the map and show other users where there are currently open parking spaces. 
- You could also input where your home is or to what location you are trying to get to so the app will always show the most convenient parking spaces first. 
- It would also update which parking spaces are currently lifted, so if for example, you were trying to park near your friend’s house on a Saturday, the app would tell you if there is enforced restrictions in that area or not. 
- In order to make the app work, it would have to first be offered to students as a free download and then as the user base was built up, we could begin selling advertising or even paid content if the service becomes large enough. 

Therefore, the development of the app would require a significant amount of personal capital infusion with a considerable amount of risk behind it as the app would not begin to generate revenue for a portion of time. However, once it does start generating revenue, I am confident that this could be a huge moneymaker. This innovation is deceptively simple but would be hugely influential in the way people at UF live their lives. As there is no current solution to this problem, there is no reason to think that customers looking for more ease in their lives would be willing to try this product out, especially since it will be a free download. As more and more people begin to use the app, it will allow the app to work more efficiently and will attract more people to it in turn. This would work as a positive feedback loop sort of scenario. Also if the app works very efficiently it may even attract some people from outside of the original target market. For example, If I am paying for a reserved spot but see everyone else having no trouble finding parking for free, I may feel that I am being ripped off and look for alternatives. This could even in turn bring the prices of reserved parking spaces down. Current competitors are technically only people offering reserved parking spaces but we are not competing in the same price-point so I would not really even consider that to be competition. The price point is extremely important in the success of the business, especially since I am offering it to college students who generally are extremely frugal. The way that it is distributed on a smart phone is also critical for getting people to use it as well. While there is no “packaging” per say, the aesthetic appeal of the app will be very important in the design process and that will psychologically encourage use of the app. In order to organize a business to support the further use of this app, I would have to have several sectors. For one I would have to have a software/ technical design team that would maintain the servers, code and continuously update and improve the way the app works. They would also be responsible for debugging and servicing the code if we run into any problems.  We would also have an executive team responsible for strategic decisions and financial aspects as well as a marketing team. I believe those aspects would be enough for the initial launch of the business and use of the product. As it grows, the management structure would most likely also have to be expanded as well.

2. I did not receive any feedback on my Venture Concept 1 or What's Next assignments. I believe that my original venture concept was pretty complete and covers what is important about my idea.

3. Since I didn't receive any feedback, I changed the formatting a bit to include a bulleted list so the text was not as dense as a huge paragraph.

28A- Your Exit Strategy

1) I intend to sell this business and use the capital to venture into other, more profitable and sustainable enterprises.

2)  I am not sure if my idea is viable long term and therefore, I want to capitalize on the success we initially receive and use that capital to make sustainable, long term growth investments. I do not believe this is my "one big idea" in my life and I am confident that I can parlay any success with this idea into other more successful enterprises.

3) To be completely honest, I was not considering this exit strategy when I was making initial decisions about the growth of my business. This is more of a strategy that has come about due to the overall concept that I have pieced together throughout this class.

27A - Reading Reflection No. 3

For this assignment, I chose to read Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

1) I was very surprised to learn that the first introduction of the Mac computer was a failure. I always assumed that Mac was the first big launch for Apple but I was confusing it with the iMac. I have always admired Steve Jobs' ability to see the bigger picture and his commitment to the craft. He understood that creating technology had an element of art in it in addition to the science of being a functional machine. I least admired how Steve Jobs could often come across as being selfish or standoffish in his commitment to his goals. Yes, in the early days of Apple, not every product was an instant success. Like I mentioned before, the original Mac was a failure in comparison to other product launches.

2) Steve Jobs not only had great technical skills in regard to the design of the product and the actual coding necessary in the creating of the original Apple products alongside Steve Wozniak, but he also had great business acumen and extraordinary creative vision.

3) I did not fully understand what lead Jobs to create NeXt after leaving Apple in the 80s. This company seemed so vastly inferior to Apple, I struggled to believe that Jobs truly could've believed in its product.

4) How do you feel your relationship with Sculley influenced the direction that Apple went in and are you satisfied with his contributions? Do you still stand by your design and business decisions regarding the release of the original Mac?

5) While I believe Steve definitely saw the value in hard work, he also seemed to me to be the type of guy to always be looking for the most efficient and savvy way to solve a problem. In that sense, I believe he understood that the best solution to a problem may not always be the one that requires the most amount of work.

26A- Celebrating Failure

1) Last semester I was taking the second Actuary exam. These exams are very rigorous and require much study to pass. I took the first one and did not study much yet was still able to pass which gave me a false sense of security. Therefore I did not study nearly as much as I should've for the second exam. I thought I would be able to pass it as easily as the first one. Due to that, I actually failed it when taking it my first time.

2) I learned that you cannot always count on things coming easily to you. Especially if you have been able to do things one way in the past, you have to account for the fact that you may have to change your tactics depending on the situation.

3) I believe that failure is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. I do not believe that failure will always necessarily help you in the future, but it could be a catalyst for positive change depending on how you react to it. Personally, when I am confronted with failure I first choose to analyze why it was that I failed, in order to understand whether or not I can avoid that failure in the future or whether or not it was inevitable. Doing this will help you to understand how to succeed the next time you are confronted with a similar situation. This class has taught me that many of the most successful entrepreneurs have failed many many times before ending up successful and that you should not be scared to take risks.

25A - What's Next?

Existing Market

1) For my existing market of UF students and people living in the immediate area surrounding the campus, I believe that a logical "next step" in the services offered would be to potentially begin to gather data from people's phones so they don't have to self-report, much like the way a GPS app does.

2) I talked to three UF students that (not currently) live in apartments east of 13th street. They said that the concept seemed pretty complete to them. One of them discussed wanting to see where their friends had parked if they were sharing a car or whatnot. That seemed like it could be easily done. Another said that you should be able to request a preferred location that you want to park in to see those spots first.

3) I believe those ideas would be easy to implement and they definitely could be done. I also think that in growing the market it would be nice to make it available to a further range in Gainesville as some students don't have the luxury of living right next to campus. I also think increased marking would be the overall best way to expand the current market.

Since the app would be constantly monitored by the development team it would be very easy to update so this product would definitely be one that would keep changing.

New Market

1) The new markets that I would like to expand to are other college campuses across the U.S.

2) I believe this is not only a Gainesville specific problem. This is definitely present at other colleges in the U.S. especially those in cities. I believe with appropriate research we would be able to take this concept to other colleges around the country and provide value in the same way we are providing value to those in Gainesville.

3) I interviewed two of my friends that go to other colleges. One goes to college in Boston and then other goes to college in Atlanta. They both told me that people that own cars have many problems with parking there as well. However, both people told me that not nearly as many students have cars as at UF. This creates a potential problem as the markets would be a lot smaller than UF and with less users, the app may not work as well.

4) Based on my interviews I believe that if I were to expand to other colleges in the U.S. I would have to either consider their geographic locations and whether they were more urban or rural. I would also have to do a lot of demographic surveys on the population to learn about the socio-economic conditions of the students and how many of them are frequent car users.

However, I believe with enough research, the concept definitely could be expanded outside of Gainesville.

24A - Venture Concept - ParkLocator

In Gainesville, especially on the UF campus and the surrounding residential areas there is very limited parking for students. With many students owning cars, coupled with the rapid growth of Gainesville and UF due to the school’s surging academic prowess this lack of parking has becoming a big problem for many students, faculty, and other residents in the area. While most apartments offer some form of reserved parking spaces, these can be incredibly expensive, costing upwards of 100 dollars per month. If purchasing your own parking space is not an option for someone, they are left with no other option but to purchase a city parking decal, relegating them to parking on the street with no guarantee of location or even availability in general. This may lead many students to try to avoid using their car just so they won’t have to be in the situation where they are unsure of where they are going to find parking. However, some students don’t even have the luxury to have options on when to use their car. Students with part-time jobs may have to drive to work and then go straight to class leaving them very little time to spend searching the streets for an available spot or waiting for someone else to leave one open. I believe that no product or service is currently serving the demand for facilitating the process of finding parking and apart from reserved spaces (which are contingent on whether you have the financial resources to get one) there is no readily available solution for students in this situation. This window of opportunity should be open for a considerable period of time. The only thing that could take this opportunity away would be development of a considerable amount of more parking that is easily accessible and cheap which could either not happen at all or take years to decades to manifest itself. I therefore believe this opportunity is significantly large and would have a large enough consumer base to make it a worthwhile opportunity to find a solution to. The innovation I’m proposing would be one that would allow people using city parking to find spaces easier and know the amount and location of open spaces. I am proposing an app that uses crowdsourced data to compile and distribute this information. Of course, this app would become more and more useful as more and more people used it and that is sort of the beauty of it in a way. With people reporting spaces that are open and reporting when they have parked in a space, the algorithm that the app uses will continuously update the map and show other users where there are currently open parking spaces. You could also input where your home is or to what location you are trying to get to so the app will always show the most convenient parking spaces first. It would also update which parking spaces are currently lifted, so if for example, you were trying to park near your friend’s house on a Saturday, the app would tell you if there is enforced restrictions in that area or not. In order to make the app work, it would have to first be offered to students as a free download and then as the user base was built up, we could begin selling advertising or even paid content if the service becomes large enough. Therefore, the development of the app would require a significant amount of personal capital infusion with a considerable amount of risk behind it as the app would not begin to generate revenue for a portion of time. However, once it does start generating revenue, I am confident that this could be a huge moneymaker. This innovation is deceptively simple but would be hugely influential in the way people at UF live their lives. As there is no current solution to this problem, there is no reason to think that customers looking for more ease in their lives would be willing to try this product out, especially since it will be a free download. As more and more people begin to use the app, it will allow the app to work more efficiently and will attract more people to it in turn. This would work as a positive feedback loop sort of scenario. Also if the app works very efficiently it may even attract some people from outside of the original target market. For example, If I am paying for a reserved spot but see everyone else having no trouble finding parking for free, I may feel that I am being ripped off and look for alternatives. This could even in turn bring the prices of reserved parking spaces down. Current competitors are technically only people offering reserved parking spaces but we are not competing in the same price-point so I would not really even consider that to be competition. The price point is extremely important in the success of the business, especially since I am offering it to college students who generally are extremely frugal. The way that it is distributed on a smart phone is also critical for getting people to use it as well. While there is no “packaging” per say, the aesthetic appeal of the app will be very important in the design process and that will psychologically encourage use of the app. In order to organize a business to support the further use of this app, I would have to have several sectors. For one I would have to have a software/ technical design team that would maintain the servers, code and continuously update and improve the way the app works. They would also be responsible for debugging and servicing the code if we run into any problems.  We would also have an executive team responsible for strategic decisions and financial aspects as well as a marketing team. I believe those aspects would be enough for the initial launch of the business and use of the product. As it grows, the management structure would most likely also have to be expanded as well.

23A - Your Venture's Unfair Advantage

1. Coding skills- Before becoming a finance major I was a computer science major and thus have intermediate coding skills that would help with this project.
2. Access to coders - I also know many people who are still in computer science and have even better coding skills
3. Knowledge of Gainesville - I know the city parking very well and thus would be able to create a service for it.
4. Knowledge of UF - I understand the way the UF campus works and how UF students would respond to a product like this.
5. Access to people with business skills - My dad is a successful business owner and thus could help with the management and technical aspects of running a business.
6. Personal capital- I have plenty of money to start a business like this which is unique to college students.
7. Ability to raise capital- I know several wealthy people who would be interested in investing in a business like this.
8. Ability to attract people to a project- I am good at finding people passionate about an idea that would be able to help.
9. Marketing skills- I have been very interested in the advertising process and as such believe I could attract users to my product.
10. Communication skills - I think while these are not exclusive, they are still very valuable and will come in handy in launching a product like this.

Based on a VRIN analysis, I believe my top resource is personal financial capital. Other college students trying to start a business like this may not have access to the money to do so and I believe its a pretty rare thing to be able to do so.

21A- Reading Reflection No. 2

For this assignment, I read "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams.

1. The overall theme of this book is regarding the fact Scott Adams has learned to leverage his failings in his life and take advantage of those failures to encourage and advance his own successes. Throughout the book, he covers several failures that he has encountered and explains how he used these failures to help his life.

2. This book was definitely relevant to what we learn in ENT, as while we are only pursuing one potential idea in ENT, it is very likely that a potential entrepreneur could need to pursue dozens of ideas before finding success. Therefore I think that this book is very necessary to connect to the curriculum in order to round out one's understanding of the subject.

3. If I had to design an exercise for this class based on this book, it would involve reading an article on a hypothetical product failure and using the information presented to design another product with improvements you received from your first reading.

4. One thing that I read that made things really click for me was that you can't expect people to behave rationally. I always try to think through things rationally and come up with deliberative solutions to problems. This is an ugly truth you have to keep in mind as an entrepreneur.